Once upon a time, storytelling became the bright new thing in B2B. What wasn’t to like about adding the human touch to our soulless marketing output? It was time to break free of feature, function, benefit comparison tables and create engaging content that played to the emotions and valued outcomes of the people we wanted to choose us (yes, B2B Decision Makers are actually people too!). Hell, marketers even added storytelling to their CVs, they were so convinced of its importance.

But then marketers actually tried it, the storytelling thing, in a B2B context, and big, bad reality started to hit – it wasn’t as easy as it sounds. Getting buy-in from product teams, selling the idea to the big bosses, drafting briefs for wordsmiths and designers, trying to explain the metrics of conversion from soft touches. It wasn’t just about engaging formats – video, carousels, or shock, horror, corporate TikTok… To work, storytelling actually needed a volume of compelling content in a structure that brought to life the point to be made, meaningful to the right people in a way they would ‘get it’.

And so it faded away a bit and marketing found a new shiny thing to focus on (Hello, AI!). But the term is still knocking around and what’s more, it’s still focused on a worthwhile goal, that of getting under the skin of prospects. What do we do with an old idea? As all good marketers do, we give it a tweak and repurpose – and discover we’ve been working towards storytelling for a while after all. We didn’t know it but we’ve been writing the all important Introduction all along, creating the storyline from which any manner of sequels and chapters can spin.

How? By deploying that much under-estimated concept, the Use Case. If a good Use Case doesn’t tell a story, I don’t know what does. It’s a short story, for sure, but there’s nothing wrong with snackable content. By its nature, your Use Case adds context, a bit of drama. Has a hero / heroine and maybe even a villain. If storytelling is the best way to weave a message into a prospect’s mind, then the Use Case provides your opening chapter. More power to the Use Case I say, there’s no better way to show what your product can do than by showing what your product has done to the benefit of a customer in a scenario that brought it to life.

Did they all live happily ever after? I think there’s more to explore on this topic – watch this space!